On the structure and composition of legislative committees: Testing a theory of majority party reliability

A central contribution of this dissertation is its elaboration of a partisan theory of committee organization. Legislative scholars have historically tested whether committees are generally representative of the chamber or whether they are disproportionately composed of legislators who have a higher demand for the constituency goods within each committee's jurisdiction. This present work suggests that this debate has overlooked the key role of party in creating the committee system. By introducing the concept of majority party reliability, this work argues that majority party leaders use systems and component strategies to create committees that will tend to operate reliably. Systems strategies involve the structure of the committee, while component strategies are related to the allocation of members within that structure. The systems strategy hypotheses examined suggest that majority party leaders "stack" a committee in their favor when the floor is closely divided and when a committee is small or important. The component strategy hypotheses suggest that smaller committees and important slots receive more reliable members, and unreliable members are less likely to receive multiple assignments. Each hypothesis receives empirical support in the U.S. House of Representatives for 1975-2001.;Given that the majority party both creates structures and assigns members in a manner that favor its collective interests, it naturally follows that the resulting committees will reflect these biases. These outlying committees are not distributive in nature, but partisan. The theoretical basis for and empirical recognition of these outliers leas been almost entirely absent from the literature. Regressions and graphical evidence in support of these outliers are presented for the U.S. House.;The analysis is extended to a wide array of institutional contexts. The party reliability hypotheses receive less support in the U.S. Senate, but systems solutions are often found in the 92 state chambers examined. Evidence confirming majority party reliability's presence in these institutions tends to be found when there is incentive to use the reliability solutions, the body is free from restrictions to implement the solutions, and there is an agent present to structure and make assignments to committees.